Pictures at the Park

The munchkins and I have thoroughly enjoyed our first week of summer. Okay, well, it's not actually summer, and it was actually our second full week out of school, but it has been the first week that we have been able to just play and take advantage of a more-relaxed schedule.

We've done something fun every day this week, and yesterday was a visit to Woodward Park. Now, I have to admit to having dual motives for this. The munchkins wanted to play at a park, and I wanted some nice photos of the munchkins (but didn't want to/couldn't pay a photographer right now;I've spent my pennies on something else, which will no doubt debut on the blog later this week-end).

I'm definitely no photographer (although it's one of those things I'd like to learn to do well), but we had some fun, and did get some photos that while not great, are good representations of this stage of life with the munchkins.

And, the kids had fun. We wandered through the Linnaeus garden, the rose gardens, played on the swings, caught tadpoles, hiked, jumped across a creek on stepping stones, and did some tree climbing. Pretty much a perfect day if you're a munchkin. Here's some pictures from the day:

Amazingly enough, we only ended up with one munchkin landing in the creek instead of on a stone while jumping. Oh, and my sunglasses made a landing in the creek while I was helping Rosie across. Thankfully, it was quite shallow, and I could fish them out with a stick. I was a bit put out, but couldn't stay that way, as Nathan and Noah were standing behind me exclaiming about how talented I was and what a good "fisher" I was. It's soo easy to be their hero right now!

LOVE this next one. Okay, so it's probably not one of those enlarge and frame-type pictures. But it is just so typical of Noah as a 6-year old!

Poor munchkins. They're desperate to climb trees. They climbed in alot of trees yesterday (and also spent lots of time wishing for a "forest like this" in their backyards so that they could climb trees every day. I think we'll be making lots of visits to Woodward Park, now that they're wised up as to the tree-climbing options there.

In case you can't tell, Noah is holding a tiny frog. We found a concrete pond that had thousands of tadpoles in all sorts of stages of development. I got the chance to show the munchkins an egg sac, a tiny tadpole, a large tadpole, a tadpole with hind legs, a tadpole with all 4 legs and still a tail, and then caught a little frog for them. Such fun! Science class, even in the summer.

Here are the munchkins looking for tadpoles with hind legs.

Ahhh. My sweet munchkins. I wonder when they'll think they're too old to hold hands. Hope it isn't too soon. (Not really related, but I had to have an "interesting" conversation this week with Noah about not being able to marry your sister.... Poor lad, he said: But, I can't marry you, 'cause you're married to Daddy, so I thought I could marry Rosie instead.)

This next one is my FAVORITE. Not sure why. I can't see their faces, but I just love it. They LOVED the bridge and the creek. They spent some time wishing that this was in their backyard, too.

Wonder if I'll be able to convince the munchkins to put off our next trip to the park until after the day-time temperatures drop below 95? Somehow, I think not.